Freedom's conditions in the U.S.-Canadian borderlands in the age of emancipation

About this book

During the Age of Emancipation, 1830-1860, racial and ethnic conflicts agitated international borders between the United States and British North America. The movement of African American and European -- especially Irish -- immigrants across borders established freedom's conditions outside of American Southern slavery. The history of the U.S.-Canadian borderlands sheds new light on the conflicted status of free and enslaved African-descended peoples in comparison to the status of recent European immigrants. Against the backdrop of state building and the professionalization of justice, issues such as the contested enforcement of U.S. fugitive slave laws and the abolitionist-inspired personal liberty laws had international repercussions. In this collection of original essays, U.S. and Canadian historians explore the emerging practices of governance and instabilities in society and law for immigrants within these territorially sovereign yet physically interconnected borderlands. The book reveals new implications of a border between places where the conditions around slavery and citizenship were different -- especially the subtle and explicit ways in which the law defended slavery, freedom, and -- sometimes -- a more ambiguous position in between. --Book Jacket.